Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters

Summary

In Plutopia, Kate Brown draws on official records and dozens of interviews to tell the extraordinary stories of Richland, Washington, and Ozersk, Russia—the first two cities in the world to produce plutonium. To contain secrets, American and Soviet leaders created plutopias—communities of nuclear families living in highly subsidized, limited-access atomic cities. Fully employed and medically monitored, the residents of Richland and Ozersk enjoyed all the pleasures of consumer society, while nearby, migrants, prisoners, and soldiers were banned from plutopia—they lived in temporary "staging grounds" and often performed the most dangerous work at the plant. Brown shows that the plants' segregation of permanent and temporary workers and of nuclear and non-nuclear zones created a bubble of immunity, where dumps and accidents were glossed over and plant managers freely embezzled and polluted. In four decades, the Hanford plant near Richland and the Maiak plant near Ozersk each issued at least 200 million curies of radioactive isotopes into the surrounding environment.

An untold and profoundly important piece of Cold War history, Plutopia invites listeners to consider the nuclear footprint left by the arms race and the enormous price of paying for it.

Reviews

A somewhat rambling account of how the United States and the Soviet Union both managed to create planned communities that embodied the apparent public virtues (and the actual social prejudices) of their respective societies, which at the same time put a public relations band-aide on the running sore of the radioactive pollution these sites were producing; to the point that the favored inhabitants of these regions were loathed to give up their privileges even as their way of life was destroying the health of them and their loved ones. Frankly, Leslie Groves and his NKVD counterparts would preferred to have simply built installations with all the living amenities of a third-rate military post to save resources, but these projects took on a life of their own once the actual controllers of the means of production took over day-to-day operations; if only to make living in an area cut off from the wider culture look attractive to the high-level managers and skilled upper crust of the onsite workforce. While gaffs like how the author refers, at one point, to a "navy" general can make one's eyes roll the basic depressing point remains that even if the powers-that-be had had a better sense of the dangers that they were playing with you know that they would have still gone forward with these projects.

Absolutely brilliant, highly readable and totally appalling. This is the story of the world's first plutonium production plants - Hanford in the USA and Maiak in the Urals - and the environmental and human health disasters that they caused.

Revealing work on the carelessness of the atomic energy industry in monitoring and regulating plutonium and its destructive effects on humans, animals, and the environment. The areas in question are the Hanford facility in eastern Washington during and after WW II, and the fits and starts in the Soviet chase to catch up. The chapters alternate focusing on each site. Very informative and horrifying.

If you are going to write a non fiction book you should have real passion for the subject not just an axe to grind. I bought this book hoping to learn more about what went on at Hanford, how plutonium was manufactured, as well as the accidents that took place. Instead you get a book written by someone who seems to know nothing about science, nothing about how the world was in the 1940's during WWII. the first 8 or so chapters are all about how sleazy DuPont the company was in the way it operated as well as the way it and the military handled hiring women and minorities to work at the factory. Who cares? You can't take your liberal social belief system from 2013 and blanket it over something from 1943. Richard Rhodes is no fan of nuclear weapons but his book "the making of the atomic bomb" is an amazing achievement in chronicling that event. Kristen Iversen the author of "Full Body Burden" is no fan of the manufacture of Nuclear weapons, having grown up next to the Rocky Flats nuclear trigger plant. But her book was interesting well detailed, and had the element of being about people. Plutopia, is written by a woman with zero science background who throws together a bunch of meaningless statements and thinks it is ok because she used footnotes. ( in chapter 7 footnote 15 she is discussing how experts knew how dangerous radioactivity was and ignored it for the sake of the project, and cites the famous example of the women who had radioactivity poisoning who worked at a watch company. What she failed to point out is that those women working there would wet the tip of the brush in their mouth repeatedly every day as they painted the watch face with radiated paint to make the watch face glow. To this day science can tell us that uranium, plutonium and all the other dangerous radioactive elements can kill you, what science can't do, is tell us why some die and some don't, why some get cancer and some don't. But this author couldn't be bothered with honesty if it lessened her point. This author has done a major disservice in pretending to chronicle what happened at Hanford, because she was more concerned with laying out her modern political beliefs, and editorializing at every opportunity to document the injustices she perceives took place. In addition to the two books I have already cited another far better book is "The Girls of Atomic City" by Denise Kiernan, who does a wonderful job detailing life and the work that took place in Oak Ridge, another huge Manhattan project endeavor. Plutopia winds up being a jumbled bunch of documented facts, none of which are questioned, rather than being a book about plutonium and the places where it has been manufactured in the world. To ignore these two aspects is to gloss over the fact that if it weren't for the manufacture of plutonium there would have been no Hanford or similar sites in the USSR, and no book to write.

"We are all citizens of Plutopia."This book presents the parallel stories of Richland Washington, near the Hanford nuclear facility, and Ozersk in the former Soviet Union, the first two cities in the world to produce plutonium for the nuclear arms race. Parts I and II discuss the creation of the two production facilities. Part III discusses the effects of plutonium production on people and the environment, including the environmental catastrophes which occurred at both these sites. Part IV discusses the aftermath of the contamination.Both communities were reserved for the elite employees and their families, and were highly subsidized and had limited access. Both cities had adjacent areas where migrants, soldiers, and, in the case of Ozersk, prisoners lived. These were the workers who performed many of the more menial and more dangerous tasks in the production of plutonium.The nuclear accidents, leaks, and deliberate dumps that have occurred at both facilities over the years are truly horrifying. Over the years these plants have issued radioactive isotopes exceeding that released by multiple Chernobyls, and both areas are ongoing environmental disasters.This was an important look at Cold War history, as well as the enormous environmental cost of the nuclear arms race. Anyone who thinks nuclear power is the answer to the energy crisis should read this book.3 1/2 stars